


To Go To Where You Are Not

by avgust



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Last Goodbye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 21:45:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9258491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avgust/pseuds/avgust
Summary: A short snippet of Legolas' final goodbye to his father.





	

The years have long since passed that had once seen them together in their lives. He was the shadow to his father's light, his joy to his father's dolor. He was always one step behind him, living his own life in joy, sheltered ever from the horrid truths of life by the hand of his loving father. But how that had all changed with the passing of the years, the passing of great realms he had once known, the passing of his friends he held so dear. All of these things had passed as if in the blinking of an eye. 

His heart no longer could find peace in these lands. That connection was long ago severed, rendered broken with the calling of the sea. He had been warned by the Lady's words, but he had little understood them at that time. Now he understands the ramifications of her words. He lives them, he is them, unable to stop them from penetrating to his soul. How those words had called to him as he saw the dimming of the light in Minis Tirith. How they called, even as he could no longer hear the labored breaths of his king-friend, who had struggled to fill his lungs with the cold harsh winter air. Oh how those words still continue calling to him. 

Those calls had ruined the love he had for his home lands, even now as he walked in the arcane forest of his youth. His eyes are dead to it all now. His soul can no longer feel the earth. In the stark of winter, the forest is bare. The birch trees that are numerous around his home, no longer speak to him. It is all too silent, too cold, and all too dead to him.

There are voices of course, of welcome, of greeting. At long last the Greenwood's son has returned. But no, nothing they can say can drown out that never ending call that echoes and crashes in his heart. It has become his everything now. It moves him, it compels him. It consumes his very all. 

In the enormous cavern walkway he moves. And even though he has walked these halls millions of times before, he feels so lost now. He is no longer a part of this world, these lands, and he knows it. The ties that held him down are gone to him. There is no redemption for him now.

And those eyes know it. They look on him, knowing that he is forever beyond his reach now. His father's lips do not move, no words can be said to undue their sundering. There is nothing that can be said, no pleas, no anger. Just the subtle growing melancholy of that simple understanding. 

His father will not go to where he must now go to. His emerald eyes tell him this. There is nothing Legolas can say to pull him from his forest. His father's spirit is this forest, and as the kings of old he will embrace this shadow life and become a paladin of its ancient meaning. Legolas knows his father will disappear into the folds of memory, lingering in the eventide just before the dark consumes the land. He will linger on just beyond that world where eyes can no longer see him.

And they are both lost they know, understanding the end of their time together. Legolas wants to reach for his father, thinking that simple touch will somehow pull him back and silence the calls that drown out all other sounds and feelings. But his father's green eyes, so cold as if they are the dead of winter, keeps him from moving. 

But still, Legolas' eyes linger on the Woodland King, who is the arcane spirit that haunts these lands. There is no escape, no saving force here that can bind him to these lands again. Not even his father, with all his might and magic, can pull his heart back into these lands and away from the sea that has claimed it. 

Legolas knows there is nothing left to do but to sail now, to finally still the pull of his heart, to fully silence that piercing call that drowns out everything else. Even if that very salvation means having to go to where his father will not.

-Fin.


End file.
